Character Voice replacement?

[Ekayne]

Discussion with my friend seemed to indicate that I was probably totally insane for suggesting something like this, but she's not a modder and really, neither am I.

 

 

Background:

 

Fallout 4's companion system has become increasingly personal. and all the characters seem to actually be more human, having opinions on the player and liking/disliking the player's choices. as such making new companion characters for the game that can have the same depth, might prove more daunting, and less rewarding as the new companions may become flat compared to the interact-able and interesting characters around them. as such the modder's workaround of adding a new companion or character on the fly may be a cop out, in exchange for the bigger possibility that I feel is necessary.

 

in another forum I talked about the possibility of re-voicing a character's vanilla lines, so as to provide extended content as that character for a mod. and I admit I feel veritably insane for doing so. but this opens a new interesting world of possibilities if implemented correctly. if a community voice actor were to voice the entire vanilla lines of a character and do so with good quality, they could then provide additional content to any mod maker who wants a companion or character to interact with their mod. for example, if a mod-maker made an abandoned amusement park, and the voice actor re-voicing the companion was on board with it, the companion would now act like the mod was there, talking about specific things that go on in that mod. this would make the mods incredibly immersive.

 

 

The Problems:

 

1-Voice Actor Fatigue

 

1A. The Voice actor would likely have to voice hundreds of mods.

 

1B. Official DLC's would have to be re-voiced as well, if selected character had lines (Nick in far Harbor?)

 

2-Compatibility

 

2. If more than one actor completed this process, mods using different voice actors might become incompatible until the voice actor did their lines (or possibly never if the VA quit)

 

3-nonusers

 

3. There would in most cases seem to need to be two or more versions of a mod, for those not using specific voice replacers

 

4- Lore Friendly?

 

4. Voicing the characters would have to mean that there should be a cannon across all mods using them. Deacon can't say that he was lying about going to the capitol wasteland in one mod, then actually have in another (well, Actually it's Deacon so..Bad example?)

 

The Workarounds

1- Besides vanilla dialogue, which has no real workaround a batch of community designed lines could be made allowing for semi-generic "Got another Quest for you" or the like lines from characters.

 

2- if it's possible, we hold a voice actor hunger games. (kidding) making it so that the community votes on the best voice actor to play the part, but I imagine this should be a very serious thing. for people who would put in job like hours on doing this.

 

3- No fix.

 

4- Some kind of Community "Accepted lore?" on character development?

 

Projected Benefits

 

1- Character

 

1a-Characters that are deeper, possibly with more Dialogue than ever before

 

1b- Characters can interact in more profound ways with mods,

 

1c- mods involving romancing of the characters can now go in more depth, and sound better than a spliced together recording

 

2- Story

 

2a- Alternative story-lines and endings could be made using voice replacers. and in this way could revolutionize what the limits of modding are.

 

2b- mods could be increasingly lore friendly and immersive as companions mention something they've heard about, meaning no more one time quest giver NPC's.

 

TLDR: Get community Voice actors to re-voice the game. for reasons.

[endaller]

I think this is just way too expansive for anyone who's not getting paid, dude.

[MLeonhardt]

So basically, you want someone to do for free what a professional voice actor got paid THOUSANDS of dollars to do, and then do MORE?

 

I'm sorry dude, this is just asking entirely too much.

 

I could maybe see it as a project for an aspiring VO's portfolio, but they would still need to get paid for a project of this scale and expected quality.

Edited March 11, 2016 by MLeonhardt

[Ekayne]

I was thinking about doing it, I just wanted to gauge the demand for something like this. and what charactor would have the most demand for a re-voice.

 

I know it's not a one evening type of thing. quite the opposite. it's not too different than the people who make offical DLC sized mods. I just kinda wanted to see if anyone else would do it with me, and if anybody actually wanted me to do it.

 

I'd be doing it right now if I knew how to get a script tbh. just for S&G's

 

and yeah...for free.

 

additionally, it doesn't necessarily have to be major characters. someone like Virgil post-humanification could create a lot of useful anti-institute remnants quests.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Ekayne

[lilkandeekid]

Discussion with my friend seemed to indicate that I was probably totally insane for suggesting something like this, but she's not a modder and really, neither am I.

Your friend is wise lol.

May want to get into VO work yourself as finding someone to get behind this scope of a project may be a little difficult.

Also, in the past you couldnt take your companions into DLC's so making dialogue for those may not really be an issue.

 

Not much of a script to work from, but Id just extract the .fuz files for the NPC you want to start with, convert them over to a usable format, and start working threw the files rerecording em.

[PoliteRaider]

 

I'd be doing it right now if I knew how to get a script tbh. just for S&G's

 

You can see a complete list of each character's dialogue in the Full dialogues and voice files list by Zilav.

 

You will also need programs to

 

Edit audio files: Audacity

Unpack .fuz files: Unfuzzer

Convert the .xwm format: MultiXWM

 

The programs I've recommended above are all free to use.

Edited March 11, 2016 by PoliteRaider

[Ekayne]

 

 

I'd be doing it right now if I knew how to get a script tbh. just for S&G's

 

You can see a complete list of each character's dialogue in the Full dialogues and voice files list by Zilav.

 

You will also need programs to

 

Edit audio files: Audacity

Unpack .fuz files: Unfuzzer

Convert the .xwm format: MultiXWM

 

The programs I've recommended above are all free to use.

 

 

thanks! I've already done some work with audacity and the other programs. the script though is a great help! thanks again.

 

though how easy is it to turn WXM's back into character dialogue? I'm under the impression that I'd need the CK for that? and then it's just a lot of clicking and dragging?

 

so far it looks like the hardest part is making sure I get every last line copied over. the organization on that document isn't the best. but hey, I made my bed, guess I gotta lie in it eh? though my dreams of re-voicing some characters at least seems more reasonable looking at this.

 

 

this was more a thought experiment, and you sir, Polite Raider, were the only one to give me concrete proof that what I was suggesting would be hard. which I expected. I just wish it was less data entry/retrieval and more VA.

 

As it stands the replacement I was thinking about doing is no longer needed or desired. so.... this thread is dead.....good day Ladies and gents.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Ekayne

[lilkandeekid]

though how easy is it to turn WXM's back into character dialogue? I'm under the impression that I'd need the CK for that? and then it's just a lot of clicking and dragging?

Unfuzzer will take care of it for you. It can convert .fuz files to and from .wav files.

[PoliteRaider]

 

though how easy is it to turn WXM's back into character dialogue? I'm under the impression that I'd need the CK for that? and then it's just a lot of clicking and dragging?

 

I know you've said you're not going ahead with this project, but just to help you understand the theory I'll explain how you'd do this if you were going ahead.

 

The Creation Kit is used to create the original dialogue and would be used if you were creating new dialogue yourself. However remember that this game is released in about five different languages, so the creation kit doesn't actually record the dialogue itself within the main file. It stores a link to the audio files (stored in the .fuz format in the voices archive or folder) and the written dialogue for subtitles/options/etc (stored I'm not sure how in the strings archive or folder). That way if you want to change language you can use the same game and just replace these files.

 

There are two ways you could go about editing dialogue. You could either use the Creation Kit to script out the dialogue in any way you like and attach it to whatever files you like. This is the "proper" way. Alternatively you can just see that the game plays a particular audio file for this character so you directly swap that audio file with a different one.

[JesusBuckland]

"Alternatively you can just see that the game plays a particular audio file for this character so you directly swap that audio file with a different one."

 

I'm going to attempt to do that for the main character. I'm kind of nervous, considering nobody has done this yet, to my knowledge... There's got to be a reason for that right..? >.>